


Postulations in Time and Space

by Erithaca



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Confession Dial, Episode: 2007 Xmas Voyage of the Damned, Episode: s01e04 Aliens of London, Episode: s01e05 World War Three, Episode: s01e06 Dalek, Episode: s01e11 Boom Town, Episode: s01e13 The Parting of the Ways, Episode: s03e01 Smith and Jones, Episode: s03e11 Utopia, Episode: s04e16 The Waters of Mars, Episode: s04e17-e18 The End of Time, Episode: s05e01 The Eleventh Hour, Episode: s09e11 Heaven Sent, Episode: s10e01 The Pilot, Gomez before Simm, May contain spoilers, Theories, Time Vortex, Time as a city, Time is the 4th dimension, Torchwood References
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-15
Updated: 2017-06-03
Packaged: 2018-10-19 08:21:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10636008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erithaca/pseuds/Erithaca
Summary: This is just going to be a series of things I'm curious about or have theories about in various fandoms. I may eventually make them into mini stories or little bits of prose or something along that line, but for now, they're just postulations.I'll add new fandoms to the list once I have questions or theories from new series.





	1. Time and Regular Dimension

**Author's Note:**

> I'm assuming anything strictly fandom based is okay, and what this is is just on the tin (or the summary up there ^), and if it's not, we'll deal with that when we get there.  
> I figure that this was a non-committal way of putting down ideas I had that other people can make into fan-fics if they want to, or take as inspiration, etc (And I'd love to see those if any get made!). If anyone has any other theories, answers or counterpoints, I'd love to see those too!
> 
> I'm putting this under teen because that should cover any future ideas I have.

I got really excited by the start of today's episode of DW The Pilot.  
In the lecture that we see the start of, The Doctor clearly starts to describe how, in the DW universe, time is not a flowing thing, but instead, like a city, where you can walk into every single room, see each moment. Your death and your birth are simultaneous, the day you fall in love is at the same time as the day that you lose your love, etc.  
This had actually been a theory I'd had about the DW universe for a while.

In "Parting of the Ways" Rose absorbs the time vortex into her head, and she says she can see everything (specifically the sun and moon, which given what she'd seen at that point, wasn't particularly interesting, but I digress), and then The Doctor says that he sees that all the time. It implies that there's some sort of laying out of time where you actually _can_ see everything at once, in some way.  
In "Boom Town", the Slitheen I'm just going to refer to as Margaret, due to ease of use, and me not being able to remember her whole name, looks into the time vortex, and she gets reverted back into being an egg, and The Doctor said that the time vortex was viewing her, or something like that. It implies that when you see into time properly, and let it apply to you on a mental level, the stage of life that you're at can become malleable in your own mind. That further means that the time vortex can sort of make you see time as meshing together, and then make that reality, which would explain why Margaret manages to reform as an egg.

It makes sense of how time lords can be taught about the whole universe at a school. If you just have to learn the geography of time, and what streets of the city represent which years, to continue the metaphor, and not the geography, and the sociology, and the anthropology, and, most importantly, the history of something, you can probably fit in a lot more detail into your education, even if hundreds of years are potentially available for your schooling.

It also explains how things can be "set in time" or "become fixed events" like The Doctor says various times in his Tennant run. I really like the city analogy, so I'll use it further. Imagine you're building up a city, and it's based on a fixed environment. There's a river and a couple hills and a marshy bit and so on. The rest of the city can be built around it, as long as those things are accounted for; there's enough bridges, and the roads have extra material for the slopes, and the supports are really good in the marsh, but you can't actually stop there being a river, or hills, or a marsh, unless you're willing to sacrifice something else or a _lot_ of effort.  
Further, this may explain Tennant's Doctor's revulsion at Captain Jack in "Utopia" and Eckleston's revulsion in "Parting of the Ways". He's the equivalent of a river, as I think all "facts" are in DW, because he just runs through everything, and everything has to end up fitting around him until he ends up reaching the sea. You can't just go sight seeing into the middle of a flow of a river. It doesn't work. You can't readily change the course of a river, because it just goes back to how it was eventually, and because this hypothetical city represents the whole of time, a river will be back in place as soon as you try to move it. I think that's the source of the revulsion. Jack should be able to be ultimately effected by the things that he and The Doctor end up doing, but he's just not, ie, it's guaranteed that there's no risk to his life, his life is a constant fact, and the end result of his life cannot be refuted. Everyone else, it's more like moving their death's house in this time city, it's really not a big deal , if they end up getting seriously hurt, time can easily rectify it (and if the timing of their death _would_ affect a lot, they have to die shortly after, so it's like they just move in with the neighbours, as in "Waters of Mars"), but Jack can't fit with that. 

It even explains how the TARDIS travels through space _and_ time... because it's not. It's only traveling through space, and in the DW universe, time is a dimension, not a separate thing, so it's a lot easier to travel through. The TARDIS stops being a time-machine in our fictional city, but more like a bus, that travels through the streets of this time-city-place, but can also travel to other time-city-places. And it's a bus, not a train, because it could, in theory, go anywhere within the city. It's a bus, not just walking, because you have to intend to stop anywhere, and because you're physically separated until you choose not to be.

tl;dr The Pilot confirms that the TARDIS travels through space, and only space, because time is just another dimension, and accessing the time vortex allows you to see this, and your very soul to react to it.  
And, yes, souls are canon in DW.

We just need to see now if my other theory of how time works in the DW universe (that ultimately, no matter your intent behind going back in time, once you know an outcome of something, that outcome has to pass, as demonstrated in "Waters of Mars" and "Smith and Jones", and explaining why The Doctor can't use his TARDIS once he becomes part of events, or rather, doesn't) is canon.

I also have to say, I really liked Bill's character.


	2. Heaven Sent - Stars

First time I saw Heaven Sent, I thought it said Heaven Spent, which makes more sense, if anything, in the episode as a whole. If I refer to it as Heaven Spent at any point in any of these, that's why.

Something a lot of people seem to wonder about for Heaven Sent, is that rock in the grave. I actually think that's the easiest thing to answer in the whole episode that isn't actually confirmed within it.  
Each time that The Doctor goes through one of his cycles through the teleporter and so on, he always spends one night looking at the stars, and on this night, he always declares how many years into the future he is.  
Loads of people ask "How did he know that the rock wouldn't be reverted by the confession dial?" but that's obvious. He saw the stars weren't.   
The version of him that buried the rock saw the stars that night, got down into room 12, realised how important it was, realised he'd take just as long to get to the conclusion each subsequent time unless it was made obvious, and had an extra-long cycle, in which he set up all the clues that the subsequent cycles would need to dig up the grave. Either that version of him or the next one, after following through a similar process, and realising the grave was empty, and what he had to fill it with, set up the grave with that rock. And I think he kept setting up that grave until it finally worked.  
I think each time he went through a cycle between setting the clues and making the grave, he probably had bought himself enough time by being faster than the time wraith to dig a little deeper to deposit the rock before he got caught up to. The grave refilled around him with soil, so that was not a constraint on him.  
And then, once he'd buried it, the creature caught him in the garden, and he crawled up to the tower and burned. I like to think the first cycle we see is the first one after the rock's placed, but there's no real reason it has to be after a significant number of cycles.  
All that matters is that one of his cycles saw the stars, could tell the year from them, and realised that physical distance stops the confession dial resetting. The rock was just the only thing he could get to which he could guarantee he wouldn't cover up with a skull, and could guarantee it would stay in place.


	3. The Architect of Britain's Golden Age

At the end of "World War III", Ecklestone's Doctor says that Harriet Jones will be the "Architect of Britain's golden age" and that she'll be voted into office for "Three consecutive terms". A "term" in the UK is the period between a prime minister moving into Downing Street and taking up the role, and the last point, if they're not voted in again, that they could leave. This used to be 7 years, but changed to be 5 years in 1911.  
So, Ecklestone says she'll be prime minister for 15 years, plus the extra 4 years because the episode was set in 2006 and the next election was in 2010. Basically, she should have been prime minister for 19 years.  
She wasn't even prime minister for 19 episodes.  
World War III was the 5th episode of series 1, so Harriet Jones was prime minister for 8 episodes in total. World War III aired on 16th April, and The Christmas Invasion aired on, well, Christmas. That's 254 days, which is pretty clearly not 19 years.  
Now what's the point of that, I pretend to hear you ask?  
From "Aliens of London" to "The End of Time" The Doctor was always one year in our future when he returned to "present" day London.  
The evidence for that:  
1) There's a big deal made at the start of Aliens of London about how Rose has been missing for year, and that she missed 12 months, not 12 hours. This means that at no point did Rose visit London (where she would definitely have ended up meeting her mother, this _is_ Jackie Tyler) between April 2005 and April 2006, and so her timeline didn't fit back to ours.  
2) Rose and The Doctor definitely see Christmas. Rose is surprised that it is Christmas, and I'm fairly sure she'd know if she'd spent a whole extra year travelling, meaning that she's only one christmas ahead. She also refers to her age in "Dalek" as being 19 (when in 2012, and 7 years ahead of her own timeline, she says she should be 26) which means she's not aware of an extra year having passed.  
3) Martha mentions the death of her cousin (at the end of series 2, in the "Doomsday" finale double episode) a couple times during her own series. This means her series is confirmed to be entirely _after_ the events of both of Rose's series.  
4) When The Doctor meets Donna again at the start of series 4, Donna is not expecting to see him, and seems genuinely surprised. This would indicate she hasn't seen him in a long time. Her lack of irritation or sass at him during their initial encounter while mouthing at each other through the window indicates it's been at least several months, and given I hold that episodes happen on the day (of the year, not to the year) of their release unless there's solid evidence otherwise, this means it's been over a year.  
5) Wilfred has had long enough since Donna lost her memories of The Doctor to set up his own fan club, indicating that many months have passed. If I recall correctly, there's also plenty of references to it being December.  
6) The Voyage of the Damned happens just before Donna's series, and is confirmed to be at Christmas several times. Wilfred first meets The Doctor here. If I'm remembering The End of Time correctly, and there _is_ a load of December imagery, this confirms a year has passed here (it _might_ be 2 years, we have no further evidence either way of that, so they might not be set back into the present).  
I don't know the time from there onwards. Either he goes back 13 years and when he travels 12 years into the future, so he's in line with the present ("optimistic"), or he goes back 12 years, travels forward 12 years and ends up still a year in the future, or he travels forward a further 12 years into the future ("pessimistic"). I favour the second of those three options, but there's no definitive evidence either way that I'm aware of; if there is evidence for any of those options, it's most likely to be in The Hungry Earth. Compact that upon us not knowing if End of Time is 1 or 2 years after Voyage of the Damned and we have as big a question about the show as "Doctor Who?"- "Doctor When?"  
The point is, that The Doctor was a year ahead of us for 3 years, and may still be out of sync. But we have _never_ seen a prediction about Earth technology that isn't a separate plot point (eg the ATMOS). I know that in reality this is due to writers not being able to predict the future, but I also think there has to be an in-universe explanation.  
Here is my take on it.   
Harriet Jones was going to set up a stronger economy ready for massive advancements in technology in the UK. The first thing we see her doing is trying to get to the acting prime minister to discuss cottage hospitals. I have never heard anyone except her, and people quoting her, referring to cottage hospitals, so they're clearly not the most pressing thing. I believe that was the first thing Harriet Jones dealt with as prime minister. We also know that Jackie Tyler's benefits increased; she says that she's earning £18 more per week and says "They're calling it Britain's Golden Age!", and I'm pretty sure that this was in The Christmas Invasion. I think that benefits reform was the second thing that Harriet Jones did.  
Harriet Jones was not planning to be prime minister, so she didn't have a proper plan of what she was going to do in the office. Thus, she was slower than most, and she only got to do that much. Britain's Golden Age didn't start. That ideal economic and political climate for developing technology didn't come about. Britain stopped developing technology that it otherwise would have.  
This reduction was enough to slow down the invention of various technologies by one year, or rather, to maintain a delay on technologies by one year. We know that Harriet Jones has an interest on technologies, because she's the second person to mention Torchwood in the series (after the Anne-droid in "Bad-Wolf" says that something new has been built on the old-Earth Torchwood Institute building), and we know that Torchwood is (apart from the time lords, and arguably UNIT) the most technologically advanced group for their time period we see, and she'd, frankly, be dead if she were one of their operatives or closely associated with them by her age, so it's unlikely that she'd know of Torchwood unless she had interest in their technology. And lo, she knows how accurate their weaponry can be, and the range of it in The Christmas Invasion. She definitely knows about their technology. She says there's an "Act of Parliament banning [her] autobiography" meaning she knows enough about Torchwood for it to be illegal for her to reveal anything. I'm willing to say that what she knows is something to do with medicine, and that's part of why she's so invested in cottage hospitals, and that she found out about Torchwood somehow through that, and learned of the rest of their technology afterwards, now with a lot of sympathy as to why it was needed, and why further technical advances were also. She's the one who sets up the sub-wave network, although it's unclear how much of that was originally from Mr Copper, and she definitely proves capable of adding people and redirecting all traces of it back to herself- she's clearly pretty good with technology even if she didn't invent the system, and I think she'd set up good conditions for technological development if given time. I wouldn't be surprised if she'd had a role somewhat like Martha Jones did for Torchwood at some point.  
I find it telling how even the Sycorax and Daleks know who Harriet Jones is in advance. They have no real reason to research the names of a random earth leader, potentially from the past... unless she made such a big impact on the history of the UK that she either sent ripples back through time so that there were prophecies of her, or she became a sort of tourist sight for them if they went time-traveling. It's reasonably solid evidence that Harriet Jones was meant to be a big deal.  
I understand it might be seen as an issue that they jump forward in time and find technology the same as it was before, and yes, it's an issue, which is why I don't think Harriet Jones' position is the _initial_ cause of the delay in technology- aliens have a lot to answer for in the DW universe, especially as many of Earth's best minds are homeless on the streets of US cities (Dalek) or being used in UNIT and Torchwood- but I think it's the reason for the _maintained_ delay in technology, and that's still 3 years worth of delay, which is quite a bit! Even worse- if the pessimistic view of The Eleventh Hour's timings is correct, it's responsible for a delay of 12-13 years worth of technology. Now how's that for a butterfly effect?

tl;dr The Doctor got Harriet Jones put out with a no-confidence vote from office, and now the Whoniverse is one year slower to get any technological updates than us.   
I think she's one of the most important characters in the whole show, or rather, she was meant to be, before Tennant started his Time-Lord-Victorious routine a few seasons early.


	4. It's Time to Talk About Missy

I feel like everyone over-complicates Missy. A lot.   
I want to get this up before the next Doctor Who episode, as the previous one patched up the biggest hole this theory had very neatly, and this theory is a lot simpler than what most people assume.

The general thinking is that, as a time-travel based show, the event order we see is obviously the order events actually occur in. The Master turns up as a human (Professor Yana) at the end of the universe, despite having had no access to a chameleon arc, and that being established only a couple of episodes earlier that Time Lords need a TARDIS to have a chameleon arc, and a chameleon arc to become a human. Yana meets The Doctor, Captain Jack and Martha, and certain phrases trigger him to open the watch. Upon doing so, he enters the TARDIS, regenerates, and decides to make a paradox for kicks, because he's gone insane or something.   
I never like the "Villain is a villain because they're mentally unwell!" explanation, because, personally, every person I've ever known with any mental disorder's been pretty nice, and I think in any demographic 99.99% of people are nice if you can be bothered to let them get to know you as they want to. I feel like there has to be a better explanation somewhere for it.  
Anyway, Martha basically makes everyone self-hypnotise, and reverses time, and then The Master's wife shoots him, and he dies, except some other people bring him back as a flesh-eating zombie person who wants to practice eugenics on a scale beyond the most terrifying visions of mankind's worst leaders, where only one set of genetics is good enough to survive, and it's so good that it can just replace everyone else. This sounds so ridiculous in quick summary.   
The Master has a diamond that's actually part of Gallifrey, and the Gallifrey High Council try to bring Gallifrey back by destroying Earth and The Master steps into this portal thing, and it closes. Then 10 ends up having to regenerate because Wilfred traps him in a glass cage of emotion.  
The Master escapes the Time War a second time, having escaped once to become Professor Yana. This escape is not explained, either.  
Then, suddenly, The Master's back, in 21st Century London, caring about how humans dispose of their dead, with a plot which actually involves psychologically tormenting The Doctor in a manner a lot closer to the Toclofane than the Masterrace, which over-all seems a lot more like early John Simm than late John Simm. She gets beaten by a teacher going out with a bang, literally, and everything seems to be fine. Then she comes back to taunt Clara, try to kill her off so she can get some alone time with The Doctor, to follow up on that seemingly random kiss.  
Apparently _that_ is what gets her arrested and makes those executioner aliens try to get The Doctor to kill her, and then gets her stuck in a vault, where she plays piano recreationally, and wants to have pizza. Also, despite Nardole saying that "They'd know immediately that you're blind", she doesn't seem to notice (or at the very least care) that he's blind at her execution.  
What a lot of sense that makes.

I can't believe that no one else seems to have thought of this anywhere.

When I first saw Missy, my first thinking was along the lines of her being a lot like River Song. She seemed to recognise The Doctor very easily, and think it was perfectly okay to snog him. I get that Time Lords seem to be able to recognise which Time Lord is which, but that was at the same time as The Doctor not being able to recognise The Master at all, which I thought seemed a bit off. If there's anything related to how recently you saw someone being important in how easily you remember someone for Time Lords, like in humans, then it looks like Missy saw The Doctor more recently than he saw her.   
The snogging also suggests that something weird was going on. None of the previous masters would have done that, John Simm's certainly wouldn't, and it looked very out of the blue... unless, at some point, Missy had gotten used to snogging The Doctor.   
We know Time Lords are made from Looms, not from giving birth, so the references to The Master and The Doctor being siblings (not brothers now, I guess) probably actually means something along the lines of them coming out of the same Loom, or being made at the same time from close-by looms- something which a species which essentially clonally replicates could sensibly compare to being siblings, which wouldn't actually mean they share genetic material. If that's right, then incest not only _isn't_ a thing on Gallifrey, but the very idea of it being bad couldn't exist, because there are no shared genetics between "family" members, and so none of the obviously terrible consequences of inbreeding could ever arise between Time Lords.  
But the looms idea of them being siblings doesn't change the fact that The Doctor and The Master had to actually decide with each other that snogging was fine, to the extent that Missy just did it. Either that, or Missy had been hanging around The Doctor long enough to decide to kiss him and just did it without caring at all what he would think, which is very much in character.   
The point is, any explanation I can think of for that kiss relies on Missy having had more interactions with 12 which we didn't see. However, The Doctor is clearly surprised by her actions, so we have to assume that they're happening out of order. And because we know she's out of order, and she's got romantic-ish feelings for The Doctor, and we just saw a lot about River Song, it's pretty reasonable to start looking further.

That obviously got me thinking about what other things we don't know about The Master's timeline. Obviously all the Yana and John Simm stuff we've seen seems to be chronological. I don't feel like anything much was missed except scenes detailing how he managed to persuade the Toclofane to murder their ancestors, which would have been entertaining at least, but it makes sense to not include due to time constraints.  
But... how did Yana get access to a chameleon arc? In The Family of Blood arc, it's pretty obvious that the chameleon arc is attached to the TARDIS, and would be difficult at best to remove. However, I'm pretty sure that Yana would have said "I was found with a watch, and this weird decorative box thing that none of us can open which we keep as part of the collection of humanity's last remaining art, because, what else could it be? That writing must be trillions of years old!" if he'd been found with a TARDIS. Besides that, he wouldn't have needed to steal one, he'd have just gone and got his own once he realised that The Doctor's was stuck between two times.  
So we know that Yana didn't have a TARDIS of his own, but he knew someone who had a TARDIS, who would know he'd be safe and be found if he was deposited roughly 60 years before the year _100 trillion_.   
There sure are a lot of people who could have a TARDIS and be willing to go to the end of the universe! What was it... "Not even the Time Lords went this far"? Or how about the fact that there's a whole 3 (4 if we count The Doctor's granddaughter, and personally I think that's a reasonable thing to do as we know from River how low a percentage of Time Lord DNA is needed to make a new Time Lord) Time Lords not stuck in the time war, and a whole one functional TARDIS in existance!  
There's no way The Master would allow himself to be ditched off somewhere if it were him in some sort of time-loop of himself, setting a past version of himself in the same place, because he'd get a lot more out of the situation if the younger him was intentionally working alongside his scheme. It had to be someone who wouldn't want The Master to be getting up to mischief, knew he'd be okay, had access to a TARDIS and was willing to travel to the very end of the universe and wouldn't just take a pistol out on him if they knew what The Master would go on to do next. What a lot of options.

If you've guessed where I'm going with this, good.   
I think that there's some plot we haven't seen yet involving Missy getting even more awkwardly flirty with 13 (or maybe even 12, if it starts in the next episode!), explaining the snogging. I think all, or at least most, of Missy's stuff is in order itself so far, although there are some omissions, such as Missy coming to realise that evil people can do good things while still being evil, and such.  
The Executioner race catch Missy either for finding out somehow about one of the two things John Simm's Master did, or for something that Missy has yet to do from our perspective. The Doctor gets called in, promises to guard her and then proceeds to bury the vault underneath a random memorable building to guard it, which turns out to be a university, and he wholly embraces that, good on him. He has to release her early due to the Pyruvile Monks, which breaks his vow. The executioner people get annoyed at this, and say he has to kill her again. He sets her off to explore somewhere, or goes on adventures with her- which will be the explanation for any future stories involving Missy- but realises that the executioners still want her dead. They probably wound her in some way which forces her to regenerate, and she regenerates into a very young male- probably someone in their early twenties, maybe their late teens, but something like that.  
In an attempt to trick them, he thinks _when will no other time traveller find her_ so he can be sure that no one will realise that she is alive and try to force him to execute her still.   
And the penny drops.  
He remembers that line "Not even the Time Lords went this far" and _knows_ that only three time travellers ever came out that far before. Missy would know her choices are consenting to the plan or being executed, so now _he_ goes along with it (although I like the idea that The Master's now permanently trans because they liked being a woman so much, and that felt a lot more in tune with themselves, and surely that bitterness towards women was just resentment? Or maybe The Master's genderfluid, and just happens to take a regeneration matching how they currently identify at that moment in time? Sue me, we need more trans characters, and The Master is a cool villain, so I'll take either if it becomes canon. I'm just going to keep using male pronouns for now though, as that's unlikely to happen, ever, sadly).   
The Doctor tells him it's important to use a certain name, and explains nothing of why that is, hence why he's called Yana. He probably recalls the story of the Toclofane, knowing he can't change what happened, because of messing too much with his future self's time stream, just to ensure that Yana thinks of the exact same plot that he did.  
The Doctor uses the chameleon arc upon Yana, travels to the place where he knew that The Master would be found, wipes his memory using telepathy, and leaves him and the fob watch behind.  
John Simm's master continues as normal, remembering everything that Missy did. The intense boredom from being in the vault all that time may have lead to an intense need to experiment and explore, and short of anything else to do, he decides to mess around with Earth's history as much as he can, just to see what happens. And left in silence apart from his own body for however long in the vault, the only thing left for him to hear was his heart. He got so used to that sound that he now implants it on his thoughts almost, like people do when they decide not to wear a watch for the first time in months, because he just assumes he has to still be able to hear it.   
(Or that heart beat thing was just always there and it really was insanity that motivated John Simm's Master. My explanation is not a cheap jab at mentally ill people, though).

Most importantly, I think anyway, beyond even the chameleon arch needing to have come from _somewhere_ , is the fact that in the normal explanation, The Master has to have escaped the time war twice. Yana had to have escaped, then John Simm reenters the time war, then Missy is miraculously outside of it, while we still know full well that the Time Lords are almost entirely stuck in stasis, with no reasonable means of escape. It's made pretty clear that escaping once is hard (in the normal explanation, it's to the extent that you have to turn into a human in order to fling yourself out of it or something).  
Wouldn't it make a lot more sense for him to only have to escape once? If it's that impossibly hard to escape the first time, why set up a time stream where he has to do that twice? 

And what evidence is there anyway that Missy is after Simm?   
Best I can figure, it's made of two pieces of "evidence".  
The first is the order of the episodes that we've been shown. But we should long since know from River Song that the order in which we're shown things does not correlate to when they necessarily happened. And this is Doctor Who! The entire premise is a weird man time-travelling around in basically a walk-in cupboard! If that sounds like a show that feels the need to abide by normal rules, I think you need to become more genre savvy. The main feature of adventures is time-travel, even! We have to assume in most episodes that the time period has changed, so why don't we assume that about other characters who the time-travellers know, and who would therefore be able to time-travel by a later version of someone's help?  
Second is a series of off-hand references that seem to be about Simm. Mostly about how Missy was left behind for dead. However, every single version of The Master so far has been left for dead at some point. Most have been left for dead multiple times. All that really confirms is that it's The Master. For all we know, Missy could even be the second Master, if having references to what normally happens in every Master's timeline is highly important evidence about when to locate her. If anything, I would say that's probably a reference to something that hasn't happened yet!  
If Missy is emulating River (and she seems to be), then it makes a lot of sense for her to be constantly referring to things that haven't happened yet. What was River's catchphrase? "Spoilers." And she referred to the singing towers before we saw them, and to the crash of the byzantium before we saw them. Missy would not be the first character reference things we haven't seen.   
And when _did_ the doctor leave Simm's Master to die? The first time, The Doctor literally begs with him not to die, and to "Just regenerate!", and gives him a full funeral pyre and everything. He definitely wasn't left to die then. The second time, Simm basically walks off into a white abyss, trying to prevent Gallifrey coming back to Earth. It didn't look like he was certain to die, and The Master was leaving The Doctor so he could die, not the other way round. If those references are in any way a valid indicator of which Master she was last (and bear in mind, it's entirely possible she was talking about something 2 regenerations ago or further), we can be fairly sure Missy was not after Simm's. 

Which will make her interacting with Simm's Master very interesting, as that seems to come up in the finale. Simm's Master will have to have somehow escaped from the time war _again_ , which according to the normal view of events, is probably going to leave him scrambling for ideas of how to escape soon. I reckon he'll be dropping hints all over the place about what will happen to Missy, that only The Doctor and longer-term fans will recognise.

I really hope I'm right on this. So far I've been able to guess all but one of the episodes' twists accurately (I predicted sister instead of mother, and if you've seen that episode, you'll know what I'm talking about), and I don't know how other people are generally doing on that front, but I think I'm in decent standing at least as a guide on whether a twist is likely.   
If it's wrong, we have a record of (what I think at least) is a cool idea.  
I'll be a gracious loser at least if this turns out entirely wrong, even if it would be a little annoying after not being able to post any of the theories about episodes during episode times, and their being accurate.


	5. Who Are the Pyruvile Monks?

I honestly don't know if anyone else has noticed this, but I feel like it should be mentioned at least by someone.

I'm referring to the monks in the current series of episodes as Pyruvile monks for now, as they haven't received a proper name; but also because they sort of look like the possessed sooth-sayers in the Fires of Pompeii- obviously the broken skin, claiming to see into the future, posing as figures with some religious connection, messing around with significant events in history, and having a bit of a thing for red cloaks. The image presented by the show is that they're sort of omnipotent but only concerning Earth and they need consent.

I have two things I think are worth noting about this. I think I know what their real species is, and I have some _serious_ questions about their capabilities.

To the easier of those things to explain; my concerns about their inconsistent power.

In _In Extremis_ , the episode seems to explain pretty clearly that the Pyruvile monks only care about simulating Earth. It's only even mentioned that they're simulating Earth. However, The Doctor exists there. Further, The Doctor is blind there. If they were only simulating Earth and it's inhabitants, The Doctor would not be there- not because they wouldn't have bothered to make him, but because he would have no memories of anything off of Earth. The first time he encountered something that would kill a Time Lord but not a human, he wouldn't have known it would kill him - not having remembered anything that happened to him off of Earth, and thus not having any reason to be suspicious about himself being an alien. He would have died in The Girl Who Waited (if not far earlier), as it's explicitly mentioned that the alien virus only affects life-forms with two hearts. He would have died had he not known this, which, if there was just Earth, he wouldn't.

Also, without there being more than just Earth, The Doctor couldn't know about alien races at all, as he'd have no way to recall them. First time there was a simulated threat on Earth that The Doctor's knowledge about ultimately stopped... that defeat would not have been possible, and they would have already conquered Earth.

Obviously, simulating more than just Earth is pretty useful, because The Doctor is _only_ useful in protecting Earth because of his knowledge of other life-forms, and he's really the main individual that the Pyruvile monks have to beat, and having a non-accurate form of him is really not helpful at all for knowing how to accurately conquer Earth.

The Doctor lost his sight on the Chasm Forge mining vessel, which was pretty obviously not on Earth. He remembered doing that, which means that there was also a Chasm Forge in the simulated universe. Either that, or the Pyruvile monks had only simulated the last few days, and artificially given everyone the same memories, and just hadn't thought to go back before The Doctor was born to conquer Earth, because they were that thick. Not to mention that would be doubly thick because they couldn't observe the ways in which previous invasions had failed. Altogether, it's highly doubtful that a civilisation smart enough to simulate an entire planet and make every AI think it's a living thing would be so dumb as to not see the flaws in that idea. They would definitely simulate everything, if they really wanted to know all possible ways they could conquer Earth (which still makes not going to befoe The Doctor was born stupid, but heh-ho).

So it's pretty clear that the Pyruvile monks are not just simulating Earth. They are simulating the entire universe. Which makes me question why they want to conquer Earth and not some clearly less defended planet. The only explanations I have are either: They are just _that_ stupid, despite being able to simulate the entire universe OR they _are_ planning to conquer every planet, and just not informing the inhabitants of each planet that they have such grand schemes to prevent interplanetary alliances and such. And that second one seems a lot more fitting for enemies worth a three-parter.

The second thing is that we clearly see that life survives for more than a year in the simulated universe. As mentioned before, The Doctor remembers being aboard the Chasm Forge. The Chasm Forge was pretty clearly from later than 2017, for various reasons, not least that despite Trump being president of the USofA, we do at least have a concept that money isn't a good enough reason to sign off millions of people's lives ~~(or do we?).~~ Anyway, Oxygen is _not_ set before 2018, which is the time frame set by that line "every living thing on Earth was dead!". There is a sinister explanation for this that I think the series is setting up: that the Pyruvile monks prevent an actual apocalypse, that the habitation in Smile was set up as the only survivors of Earth left in 2018, and the Chasm Forge was the result of an economy with no regulation because the population was still too small to afford anyone checking for corruption.

However, I think that's unlikely for the obvious reason that Smile was way beyond technologies predicted for 2020, which already places it as 3x the given time-frame. Plus, there'd be no guarantee that the lysobacteria (lyso= _basically_ programmed breaking or death. I feel lysobacteria is a better name for something decided to be a death bacteria than "bacteria charged with 20x as much mystery digestive yellow enzyme as needed", especially for my purposes) couldn't have gotten onto the ship somehow. Even one of them getting out would spell the end of that colony that we saw. So Smile would not be possible to be the result of the lysobacteria.

The Doctor and Bill's personalities are clearly the exact same and they have the same relationship in the simulator, so we have to assume that they have the same experiences; which confirms Smile (and all other future episodes set on Earth with life still there); thus disproving the idea that the lysobacteria would have killed all life.

I mean, in all likelihood, it'd just be the RoK, PRC and UofA (places I know of with enormous nuclear strongholds), as well as major government members of Israel, Russia, France and the UK (places with smaller nuclear strongholds) surviving because of having nuclear bunkers for days, but there'd be people. So we know from a purely logical view that the lysobacteria would not kill all life on Earth.

That, and that the images of Earth in the future included an image of what I think is a palm tree in Hurricane Yolanda. I get that the BBC can't stage a hurricane, but if all life was really gone, they could have just not used that particular footage? A mudslide would have been a good choice, or something like the 2008 Sichaun quake, where the moved earth completely covers up any vegetation, but also looks like a massive destructive event.

As it is, we saw a perfectly healthy, if windswept, palm tree, just before the line "everything on Earth was dead." Well, it just wasn't. That palm tree was fine. We know palm trees are fine. Loads of plants are hardier than palm trees. I refuse to believe palm trees would survive and not underwater creatures, separated by environment. For those not aware of this: bacteria need specific gases around them to be able to live, just like us. Bacteria that live in air are unlikely to be able to survive a kilometer down in the middle of the ocean. So sea life would survive, and could re-evolve at the very least. I also refuse to believe that it would kill wooly-bear caterpillars too, or phoenix bushes, or tumbleweed, because they are all essentially immortal, and can "die" periodically, and then come back. There's no nutritional value in a phoenix bush when it's "dead", so the lysobacteria would all starve upon it, and they'd be fine. Then there's just the sheer heat in many places- humans are pretty good at cooling ourselves down, as we evolved in tropical environments, and we just die when we stay out too long in somewhere like the Sahara desert. All the people need to do is build underground houses there, and an organism adapted to extreme cold (the atmosphere- it's stated that the lysobacteria would get worldwide by living in the atmosphere, which is a lot colder, for most of its height, than the surface) would definitely die when in the blazing heat of a hot desert.

Anyway, my point is, there's no way in that a bacteria described as being perfectly fine living in the high atmosphere would be okay in every environment on Earth, and thus able to kill every living thing there.

So we know they're liars on two counts. They're not able to kill all life on Earth, and they're not just conquering Earth.

However, they are able to brain-wash people. Bill saw the palm tree (and it was shown for long enough for me to recognise the architectural style, and that it seemed to be a North-South stretching shoreline, which would fit the Phillipines, and therefore Yolanda better than Katrina, so it was definitely there long enough to get that there was a palm tree) but _she_ said that there was no life on Earth. Bill is not normally a liar, so the Pyruvile monks must be able to convince you of things you clearly know are wrong.

And the final inconsistency (that I noticed). Number keypads always have 5s with a lump in the middle. Every single number keypad I have ever seen has had a lump on the 5. It is there explicitly to help blind people be able to use it. That's computer keypads with a side dedicated to numbers, padlocks, number locks, those little vertical Quirkle door pad things... all of them have a lump on the 5.

The Doctor has been on Earth for long enough, and is observant enough, to hopefully have noticed that 5s have lumps. They're normally discrete enough to not be seen, but they're there, on pretty much everything.

The dials on the door in the lab looked a lot like padlock style dials. They should have had a lump on the 5, and The Doctor should have noticed it. And we already know that the Pyruvile monks can convince you of stuff that you know to be wrong, and can simulate an entire universe.

What reason do we have to believe that they weren't brain-washing The Doctor himself into thinking there was no lump on the 5, or something else along that lines? The Doctor should have been able to open that lock. Heck, anyone who's ever been near a keypad should have been able to open it if blind-folded. Just find the lump, work out where the numbers are by spinning it until you find the lump again, spin to the appropriate position, and continue. It would take a while, but less time than he was shown to be in the lab for. If I found lumps on numbers and didn't know what it meant, I'd just do that method, and rotate all down one number over and over until it worked out anyway. I'm pretty sure The Doctor would think of that. So there's evidence he could have been brain-washed, that he was brain-washed, and there's nothing otherwise.

And even making someone see again isn't very hard. There's numerous recorded cases of it. One even goes as far back as Mozart- one of Mozart's friends was a female composer who was so horrible emotionally abused as a child she lost her sight. A physician helped her to see again, but being able to see again after so long without proper councilling was in itself so traumatising that she lost her sight again shortly afterwards. A man in the 1900's in the USofA got his sight back decades after losing it, but could only actually use it if he was touching the object concerned already. There's a project at the moment to allow sunglasses to be connected via electronic chip to a shirt, which then sends a slight electronic signal to different transmitters on the owner's back, and this has been effective enough that users can reliably catch tennis balls (too small for a single transmitter to consistently send signals for), and recognise individual people's faces. In short; humans can already restore vision, or a suitable substitute for vision in the case of the shirts, without the need for alien superpowers. That and that the sonic sunglasses are a cool nod to current medical research.

So... they're capable of simulating an entire universe, though their medical care was achievable in the 1600's. They're smart enough to think strategically and lie consistently, but too stupid to think of time-travel, which they're clearly powerful enough to manage. They can brain-wash people, and convince anyone of whatever point they want even while showing them that it's wrong, but not brain-wash them into genuinely believing they want to do something. It's a little inconsistent, don't you think? It makes me think there might be a puppet behind the strings or something, as that's the only reason I can think why they're acting so strangely.

 

Which brings me to my second point idea. Kind of. Not really, but I couldn't think of a good link. I mean, it might do, depending on how you interpret things.

There are two DW villains I'm aware of with horribly deformed eyes and even a total lack of them sometimes, old martial arts movie standard lip-synching, bad teeth, highly inconsistent capabilities, an ability to very much mess-up a time-line, a liking for places with some Christian significance, at least a very slight ability to brain-wash, a penchant for mono-colour cloaks, and a need to have consent. That's a few too many parallels to look like a co-incidence, right? 

I think this is the 3rd Doctor Who and Sarah Jane Adventures cross-over- and the first one was also with this villain. I mean, they're not going to state that, as Elizabeth Sladen is sadly not going to be able to do any further acting for hopefully obvious reasons, the background cast of SJA are not well-known enough to be able to get one on their own, we would have seen Luke Smith or K-9 in the Next Time for the upcoming episode, and someone would have leaked rumours about seeing the actors for it on-set by now (it would be awesome, though), but that doesn't mean they can't use the villains from it. SJA has done that before- directly linked a villain between two episodes, as in the case of that sontaran who crash-lands in Maria's last episode being directly after The Poison Sky- so there's a reasonable precedent for DW doing it, too.

And the villain that will be featured? The Trickster.

Which makes the Pyruvile monks members of the Pantheon of Discord.

Though that's actually a group of alien races, from what I've gathered, so we still don't have their species name, and calling them Pyruvile monks is still reasonable.

For those who don't know who The Trickster is, he features in three episodes of SJA. The first is that someone who Sarah-Jane saw die as a child makes a deal with The Trickster to eventually swap places with Sarah-Jane, and so Sarah-Jane stops existing for a while, and the Jackson family have to try to repel an asteroid before it hits Earth. The second involves a brain-washed Grask luring Sarah-Jane back in time to her birth-place, and getting her to save her parents, which allows The Trickster to come through in an old monastery, or church, I can't remember what exactly, but it was something religious. The third had Sarah-Jane _and_ the deal-maker potentially becoming brain-washed; he was trying to marry her, and upon her wedding, and saying "I do" all her memories of The Doctor and fighting aliens would vanish (this is the cross-over with DW). I'm quite proud of summarising 3 episodes there without giving away how any of them end.

I know that that makes The Trickster seem pretty pathetic, but he's known to have brought 3 people back to life, and in one of the alternate universes his deals make, he enslaves the whole human race. He's one of the more powerful spin-off villains in the DW franchise, especially in SJA. And that's one member of one of the species that make up the Pantheon of Discord. An entire species, which might be more powerful anyway on an individual level, who are members? Yeah, they'll be powerful. Definitely powerful enough to make a universal simulator. And judging by how much destruction The Trickster can manage with just a few people's consent, (matching how the Pyruvile monks only need one person's consent), I think an entire alien race should be able to manage that.

 

I think I've hyped myself enough for this idea I'll honestly be disappointed if it's wrong, and it probably will be, because DW only very rarely acknowledges its spin off (would anyone have guessed there was a spin-off based in November 2016 from what they've seen this season? Class is pretty good, good villains, none of the actors have aged significantly and The Doctor has appeared in it, so it'd be a prime candidate to acknowledge).

I'd also love an acknowledgement of the fact that they're still being messed with. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if this was just another simulation in the style of a far more long-lasting and therefore convincing Amy's Choice (which was a great episode, and call backs to it are very welcome).

But in about 2 hours, we'll see whether all of this was right or not, and I'll either look brilliant or just plain sad for having over-thought this much. We'll see.


End file.
